statue, that expressed in a blushing whiteness his confusion at
the sight of his son Learchus, who died at his feet of a fall.

On the sixth was Mercury in hydrargyre. I would have said quicksilver, had
it not been fixed, malleable, and unmovable. That nimble deity had a stork
at his feet.

On the seventh was the Moon in silver, with a greyhound at her feet.

The size of these statues was somewhat more than a third part of the
pillars on which they stood, and they were so admirably wrought according
to mathematical proportion that Polycletus's canon could hardly have stood
in competition with them.

The bases of the pillars, the chapters, the architraves, zoophores, and
cornices were Phrygian work of massive gold, purer and finer than any that
is found in the rivers Leede near Montpellier, Ganges in India, Po in
Italy, Hebrus in Thrace, Tagus in Spain, and Pactolus in Lydia.

The small arches between the pillars were of the same precious stone of
which the pillars next to them were. Thus, that arch was of sapphire which
ended at the hyacinth pillar, and that was of hyacinth which went towards
the diamond, and so on.

Above the arches and chapters of the pillars, on the inward front, a cupola
was raised to cover the fountain. It was surrounded by the planetary
statues, heptagonal at the bottom, and spherical o' top, and of crystal so
pure, transparent, well-polished, whole and uniform in all its parts,
without veins, clouds, flaws, or streaks, that Xenocrates never saw such a
one in his life.

Within it were seen the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve months of
the year, with their properties, the two equinoxes, the ecliptic line, with
some of the most remarkable fixed stars about the antartic pole and
elsewhere, so curiously engraven that I fancied them to be the workmanship
of King Necepsus, or Petosiris, the ancient mathematician.

On the top of the cupola, just over the centre of the fountain, were three
noble long pearls, all of one size, pear fashion, perfectly imitating a
tear, and so joined together as to represent a flower-de-luce or lily, each
of the flowers seeming above a hand's breadth. A carbuncle jetted out of
its calyx or cup as big as an ostrich's egg, cut seven square (that number
so beloved of nature), and so prodigiously glorious that the sight of it
had like to have made us blind, for the fiery sun or the pointed lightning
are not more dazzling and unsufferably bright.

Now, were so